O'Connor: Fighting zombies with zombies

Updated 6:42 am, Friday, June 29, 2012

He's the founder and "zombie commander" of Houston Zombie Walk, a 2½-year-old, year-round charity that hosts zombie events, culminating in the downtown Zombie Walk on Oct. 27. (The group's most recent outing was a pub crawl; the next event is the Apocalypse Ball on Aug. 4 at Frenetic Theater. These are fun zombies.)

During the day he's a thirtysomething oil-and-gas project manager downtown. That's where he sees the real zombies. "They're dressed up, doing the same things over and over again, elevator to cube and coffee at 10:15," Tompkins says. "And it's awfully quiet. You see somebody, he gives you a half-nod, and then you don't see him again till the next day."

Zombies are quiet when they're not hungry, he points out.

The downtown tunnels are even worse - "awfully creepy" - with their hordes of women who've exchanged their heels for sneakers. Ummm, that's me, Darren.

"I don't want to be like them," he says.

So he fights the creeping zombie-ness the best way he knows how: with zombies. Yes, it's counterintuitive, but it works. If the nature of zombie-ness is mindlessness, Tompkins is all about paying attention: being creative, being social, giving back. And if it takes zombies to do that, he's fine.

Matt Mogk has a slightly different take on the zombie thing. He's the head of the Los Angeles-based Zombie Research Society, which is an actual society for "supergeeks" who game out zombie scenarios. For him, the zombie isn't so much about the "dehumanization and mindlessness of modern existence" as about fears of the world ending. "Think about it," Mogk says. "You never see one zombie."

A zombie is more like "a virus with legs and teeth" to him, an infectious disease and a convenient focal point for all our collective worries. "Look at the economic collapse, terrorism, large-scale natural disasters - the aftermath looks and feels a lot like the aftermath of a zombie outbreak."

He has some decent cultural evidence, too. Zombie literature essentially did not exist before 2003 (think 9/11), and now "anything with 'zombie' in the title gets published." Mogk himself has a zombie children's book out, "That's Not Your Mommy Anymore." Nice.

Here's a strange thing: Tompkins and Mogk, the zombie guys, are two of the most relentlessly cheerful people I've talked with in ages. Small sample, but still, they may be on to something.

"Maybe I'm cheerful because we're not in the midst of a zombie outbreak," Mogk says. "It's kind of nice."